Good guys in the machine.....

I really liked this post by Glenn Reynolds...

A GUY WHO WORKS AT PFIZER wrote me about my book -- nothing really relevant here -- but in my reply to him I wrote:

BTW, we love Pfizer in my house because your exotic anti-arrhythmic drug Tikosyn has changed my wife's life. It's genuinely a miracle drug for her.

He emailed back:

I will pass your thanks along to the guys in the lab. You have no idea how much this kind of message matters to them --and to all of us. We KNOW there's a pony in there somewhere but some days it's not easy to remember that.

It's kind of sad that such a small email means so much, but I suppose that these guys get a lot more criticism than praise, despite the miracles they produce. But it occurs to me that -- while so-called "Big Pharma" may not be perfect -- drug companies have done a lot more to make my life better than their critics have. Maybe someone should point that out more often.
UPDATE: Related thoughts from TigerHawk.

How sick I get of leftist hate-mongering, such as the ritualistic portrayal of big oil or pharmaceutical or defense companies as "greedy" and evil and corrupt. That stuff is just stupid shit, and the people who come out with such blather are living in lies. (It is of course possible to make reasoned criticisms, with evidence and logic. But those are few and far between on the Rive Gauche.)

Those companies are all just collections of people, who by and large are trying to do a good job and leave the world a better place. Their profits, averaged over time, are reasonable, and comparable to those of, say, hippie save-the-earth-and-pat-ourselves-on-the-back companies like Ben and Jerry's or your local organic-food supermarket. (Actually, the whole idea of "profits" as the left sees them is a delusion--Peter Drucker explained this long ago. Read and learn.)

Posted by John Weidner at December 11, 2006 10:38 AM